1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to controllers, and, more specifically, to a controller for accessing services from multiple providers of services.
2. Description of the Prior Art
With numerous services consumers have a choice in selecting the service that they wish to receive. Thus, for example, a viewer can switch between broadcast channels on a television set or cable channels on a cable system. However, there are numerous situations where a consumer is essentially tied to one service provider. This is true, for example, in connection with long distance telephone carriers, and the like. Thus, for example, consumers typically sign up with one long distance carrier and all of the long distance telephone calls are automatically placed by the local telephone company through the selected long distance telephone carrier. When a consumer decides to change from one carrier to another, the local telephone company frequently imposes a charge for changing the long distance carriers. However, by being tied to a specific long distance, the consumer has been required to incur whatever charges that long distance carrier was charging for long distance calls. While long distance carriers frequently spend a great effort and expense to attract new customers, once a customer has signed up with a long distance carrier, there is no incentive for the long distance company to lower their fees, to provide better services, etc, since the customer becomes a "captive" customer that the long distance company can, more or less, rely upon for continued patronage. In most instances, consumers tend to elect and stick with the larger long distance carriers, such as AT&T, Sprint, MCI, etc, names which are well known to them and that they are used to dealing with. However, these companies do not necessarily provide the lowest rates or the best services.
A number of devices have been proposed and have become available in the market place for allowing consumers to dial different long distances carriers. For example, Metro Tel of Jericho, N.Y. offers a dialer, Series 2500, which dials out sequences of numbers to access inter-exchange carriers of choice for long distance or toll calls. These dialers accept and store the network access code, authorization code and then redial the numbers at an appropriate timing sequence. The operation is transparent to the user and the user does not have to dial any extra digits. These dialers also provide least cost routing of long distance or toll calls, and up to ten different routes are available which can route by area codes and three digit prefixes to the carrier of choice. However, all of these functions pre-programmed into a memory unit an accessed at a pre-determined time via the customer's usage. The unit is, in essence, an automatic phone dialer that depends on a pre-programmed set of assignments.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,972,464 a system is disclosed for placement of a long distance telephone carrier point-of-presence and call routing. The system determines the transport cost of long distance traffic to a long distance carrier and the lowest cost routing for long distance traffic within a local area of transport that is being accessed by customers and picking the carrier via a programmed computer. Such system is typically in a central office or toll switching center.
Numerous systems have been disclosed for routing calls. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,756,019 discloses a routing and automatic network management system for telecommunications networks. Telephone call routing and charging systems are known, as suggested in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,410,765. A programmable automatic calling system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,468,529, in which a predetermined time interval is provided for the user for initiating operation of an automatic calling system for outputting access telephone number and billing code information. An inter-exchange carrier access system which uses automatic number identification (ANI) is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,769,834 and 4,799,255. Thus, elaborate routing circuits for use at telephone exchanges are known. Automatic dialers, per se, are also well known and commonly used. However, a telephone controller has not been proposed which automatically connects a caller to a long distance telephone carrier as a function of a pre-programmed algorithm which automatically inserts a suitable long distance prefix access code prior to dialing, in which the algorithm provides a desired distribution of usage of the service providers by the subscriber.